A PC edition of Final Fantasy VII was available for sale briefly over the weekend, but was quickly pulled, and those who were able to purchase the game were not able to get it to play, reports Joystiq by way of the SQUARE ENIX Forums. Users were unable to get the game to authenticate, leading to speculation that this was a DRM error, but a subsequent post on MCV says they've learned that "the title was is not yet ready and was simply released prematurely," saying they learned this from "a company dealing with the situation."

I found the initial release of FF7-PC to be very crash prone so I doubt I'll be checking this out. It's kind of pointless anyway, you can get a way better looking setup using ePSXe or PCSX-R with about 5 minutes of free time.

Icewind wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 18:27:I was working in a Software Etc. when FF7 PC came out and yes, there was really only one bug and a big one: Riva TNT cards (What we call nvidia nowadays I suppose in a way) would fail to show the proper animation for the Odin summon. That's all.

It was fixed in a patch.

The whole of the game was actually very bug free. The "bugs" came later when windows changed its kernel and everyone trying to run it in Windows XP saw that it crashed during the choboco race and prevented completion of the game.

You're really better off playing your PS1 copy on a legal emulator. (Legal so long as you own the game)

The real reason why anyone would want to buy this is for the achievements.

I personally have held off on re-playing FF7 for the better part of a decade in hopes that we would eventually get some solid DRM in the game.

Icewind wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 18:27:I was working in a Software Etc. when FF7 PC came out and yes, there was really only one bug and a big one: Riva TNT cards (What we call nvidia nowadays I suppose in a way) would fail to show the proper animation for the Odin summon. That's all.

It was fixed in a patch.

The whole of the game was actually very bug free. The "bugs" came later when windows changed its kernel and everyone trying to run it in Windows XP saw that it crashed during the choboco race and prevented completion of the game.

You're really better off playing your PS1 copy on a legal emulator. (Legal so long as you own the game)

The real reason why anyone would want to buy this is for the achievements.

I was working in a Software Etc. when FF7 PC came out and yes, there was really only one bug and a big one: Riva TNT cards (What we call nvidia nowadays I suppose in a way) would fail to show the proper animation for the Odin summon. That's all.

It was fixed in a patch.

The whole of the game was actually very bug free. The "bugs" came later when windows changed its kernel and everyone trying to run it in Windows XP saw that it crashed during the choboco race and prevented completion of the game.

You're really better off playing your PS1 copy on a legal emulator. (Legal so long as you own the game)

It was extremely buggy at release, it had all sorts of problems working on specific cards and a lot of people had slowdown/crash problems during the video segments. There were also specific crash bugs that went unpatched and only showed up at specific story segments which made the game uncompletable for some. It was many pc gamers first exposure to console ports too, sad to say.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 14:33:The original PC release was bug filled? Really? I must have played it oh I dunno 40 or 50 times and never came across a bug, outside of the same bugs that existed on the PS platform. Besides the game looks much better with the bootleg version, besides that? Meh. Shitty? It wasn't any shittier than the PS version.

But I can't quite figure out where or why they want to put DRM on a 13 or is it 14 year old game.

Yes, it had severe issues with the graphics card (dont remember exactly which one) we owned at the time it was released ("3d accelerators" were still pretty new to pc's then though). I remember video playback being *majorly* messed up as well, with the background videos sometimes going completely black (particularly in the hybrid 3d/fmv scenes) Chocobo racing would crash randomly (good reminder to save frequently though!)

And yes, the game was obviously playable from beginning to end (40-50 times!? lol) but claiming that it is as good as or any better than the PSX version just tells me that you probably didn't play it on that platform.

The massive degradation in the FMV alone is reason enough to steer clear of the awful Eidos PC port.

Steele Johnson wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 11:04:Looks like they're off to a good start lol

They need to put it on Steam. FFXI is already there and has been a big success with fans. Lots of new players on the servers.

Really? I loved FFXI back when in the day, I played it like crazy. But the thought of starting a new character and everyone else is level 99 scares me. I remember I would sit around hours waiting for a group, and I was a red mage.

Ugh. Red Mage here as well. I remember waiting forever for a group, finally getting one, wiping first pull or some moron fishing up a monster during a pull and deleveling. Boo.

They've learned a lot about job balance and game dynamics. Most leveling these days is done in big groups that form quite quickly via shout. Going 1-17 is done solo, while 17-30 happens in casual alliances where levels are synced together. 30-99 go really fast, using 18-person rolling alliances in new Abyssea zones. You can do 30-55 in 2-3 hours, and 90-99 in about 4 hours. There are also usually alliances rolling through various zones, and you can send the leaders an invite request.

The raised level cap also means you can go back and solo missions from previous expansions once you hit 99, or just take a couple of friends. The previous expansions were aimed at level 75 players so you can blow right through them. The whole game is a lot more casual-friendly.

Finally, if you had a character at any point, especially in the last 4-5 years, there's a decent chance it can now be recovered so long as you didn't completely delete everything. I was able to grab mine in late 2011 and hadn't played since early 2010.

PropheT wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 15:14:I played through it on PC a few times back around when it came out and never had a problem, either. Never heard about it being buggy before.

The only bug that I ever had that was annoying was the missing s.7 key, which means I couldn't go back and get some stuff. And it's reallly rare. Everything else was minor. Anything else though? There was hmm one or two patches that came out and those were eax related crashes. Good old eax. Heck, I played it just the other day on Win7x64 without a problem just to see if it would work, not a problem. I'm working on getting all the bootleg stuff installed now so it'll look pretty.

--"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 14:33:The original PC release was bug filled? Really? I must have played it oh I dunno 40 or 50 times and never came across a bug, outside of the same bugs that existed on the PS platform.

I played through it on PC a few times back around when it came out and never had a problem, either. Never heard about it being buggy before.

IIRC it didn't have that many issues if you played it when it came out. It was trying to get it running later on newer PCs/OSs that was iffy.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 14:33:The original PC release was bug filled? Really? I must have played it oh I dunno 40 or 50 times and never came across a bug, outside of the same bugs that existed on the PS platform.

I played through it on PC a few times back around when it came out and never had a problem, either. Never heard about it being buggy before.

The original PC release was bug filled? Really? I must have played it oh I dunno 40 or 50 times and never came across a bug, outside of the same bugs that existed on the PS platform. Besides the game looks much better with the bootleg version, besides that? Meh. Shitty? It wasn't any shittier than the PS version.

But I can't quite figure out where or why they want to put DRM on a 13 or is it 14 year old game.

--"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

You'd be better off emulating this now-a-days honestly, unless you have a PS1/2 sitting around to play it on.

Theres even a fan-created FF7-Hard Type available that raises the difficulty considerably if you dont find the original to be much of a challenge..

But whatever you do stay away from the shitty PC version.. learned that lesson over a decade ago, and judging from the craptastic rollout of this one, and the fact that they did not add a single thing to it besides DRM And "achievements", neither of which are worth putting up with such a miserable port.. not by a long shot.

Modern PS1 emu's on the PC can make the original look quite a bit better than the game originally did, it's a win-win.

Steele Johnson wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 11:04:Looks like they're off to a good start lol

They need to put it on Steam. FFXI is already there and has been a big success with fans. Lots of new players on the servers.

Really? I loved FFXI back when in the day, I played it like crazy. But the thought of starting a new character and everyone else is level 99 scares me. I remember I would sit around hours waiting for a group, and I was a red mage.

Ugh. Red Mage here as well. I remember waiting forever for a group, finally getting one, wiping first pull or some moron fishing up a monster during a pull and deleveling. Boo.

Steele Johnson wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 11:04:Looks like they're off to a good start lol

They need to put it on Steam. FFXI is already there and has been a big success with fans. Lots of new players on the servers.

Really? I loved FFXI back when in the day, I played it like crazy. But the thought of starting a new character and everyone else is level 99 scares me. I remember I would sit around hours waiting for a group, and I was a red mage.

The original port didn't even bother raising the resolution or texture sizes up. I doubt I will be surprised with this one. Actually, the original port may of been one of my first experiences with a port to begin with.

Dades wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 10:27:It's like they're doing everything possible to make sure no one buys it.

That's exactly the case. It shouldn't have escaped your notice that the one thing everyone wants is the one thing they have repeatedly not made. They don't ever want their millions of fans to buy FFVII again.

Why?

The Honeybee Inn.

The original bridged the gap between having a cult following and being a true hit. Because it was the big reintroduction of the series to America, it didn't have all the Japan filtered out of it. Many of the sidequests (the effeminate protagonist can take a large black man on a date) are things that would make whitebread Americans uncomfortable. The game failed to cause outrage because it's too long for parents to pay attention, sidequests were frequently missed in the age before Gamefaqs, (octagon weapon lol) and the translation was just off enough that kids would see weird things happening and react with "huh?"

None of that would fly now. The gamers ARE the parents. They'll play with their kids, joyfully showing them the best of their generation. Gamefaqs and a million wikis stand ready to ensure that no stone is left unturned this time. And a true remake with old-style translation would just piss everyone off.

Middle America would find the Honeybee Inn in its favorite game, and throw an unholy shitfit.

The other choice is to remove it, thus alienating the hardcore fans that you're nominally making it for. It's lose-lose.

Darks wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 11:31:It just kills me that they go to the trouble of putting DRM into a game that is only costing 12 dollars to buy. Plain nonsense that they even worry about protecting a game that’s this cheap.